Customer onboarding can sometimes be considered an afterthought for organizations—leading to lengthy times to get up and running, under-educated customers and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Ensuring your customers are onboarded quickly and effectively is crucial to success, but also presents a number of unique challenges.

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Child-like Joy
ALIGN YOUR ORGANIZATION AROUND
AN ONBOARDING APPROACH THAT SCALES
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.

2. ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Child-like Joy
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Denise Stokowski
VP of Client Solutions
dstokowski@gainsight.com
Sara Vaughan
PMO Director
svaughan@gainsight.com

3. ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
• The process to get the customer “up and running with
your product”
• It is the first experience a new customer has with your
company
• Positions your customer to achieve their goals and
realize value from your product
What is onboarding?

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Onboarding Models Vary
Complexity of
Onboarding
Who does onboarding Challenges of Scale
Simple – Self-service or
orientation
Customer Success Tracking who has
onboarded successfully
and who has not
Medium – Multiple
sessions to cover
orientation and training
Customer Success or
Specialized Onboarding
Team
Consistent coverage and
tracking, scaling 1:1 to
1:Many
Complex – Product highly
configurable
Services or third-party Consistency on best
practices, growing skilled
resources
Gainsight

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Our Goals Today
• We want to share our learning for scaling our onboarding
process
• The tools and personnel required for an onboarding process that
works
• How to identify specific milestones that every customer should
reach within standard timeframes
• How to think about ways to scale your onboarding process

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Child-like Joy
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Gainsight’s Onboarding Journey!

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A Quick Reflection:
Where we were
at this time last year…

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Success through Determination
• Project managers did everything
• Manage the project plan
• Configure much of the product for the customer
• Train the customer’s power user
• Solve for customer’s special requirements
• Time to value for our customers was too long and too
variable

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The Hockey Stick of Sales

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Success through Determination
• Project Managers: 6
• Ramp-up time: 4 months
• Average Hours per Week: 67
• Hours per Project – highly variable
• Minimum: 65
• Maximum: 600+

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We had to do something!

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• 3 days locked in a room with representatives from:
• Success
• Product Management
• Product Engineering
• Support
• Services
• Investors
• The Mission: Help Gainsight customers to achieve
faster time to value while enabling our business to
scale, i.e. have capacity to serve our new customers
All Hands on Deck – The “TTV” Initiative

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The Outcome

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Success Express
A new approach to handle onboarding a high growth
segment of our customers
AND
a framework for customizing for larger customers

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Success Express Philosophy
High velocity onboarding focused on enabling your
team to take full ownership of Gainsight
Structured
& Prescriptive
Enabling your team Based on learning
from 100+
implementations

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Success Express: Our Prescriptive Onboarding Approach
Success Express Workshop
Steps 1-6 in 3.5 days
TOUCH your
customers at scale
Customers & Sponsor
Tracking
1
Lifecycle Cockpit2
Usage and Scorecard3
Lifecycle Email
Communications
Lifecycle Reporting
4
5
TRACK customer
health consistently
NPS Surveys
Customer 360 +
Engagement Data
Health Scorecard
6
7
8
TRANSFORM your
processes
Engagement Analytics
Triggered Email
Communication
Triggered Engagement
Rules
9
10
11
5 weeks for steps after Workshop
PREWORK
Engagement Data
Integrate your other key data points, e.g. Product Usage
~ 14
days

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1 2Install Gainsight
and Configure 3 4
• Install Gainsight
from AppExchange
• Authorize Gainsight
Integrations
• Create and Assign
Permission Sets
• Configure Sites for
Survey Distribution
4 Hours!
Resource: Salesforce
Administrator!
Data Preparation
• Identify Active and
Inactive Accounts
• Identify key
Contacts
• Collect historical
NPS Survey
responses
5-10 Hours!
Resource: Gainsight
Administrator!
1 Hour!
Resource: Email
Administrator!
Email Service
Configuration
• Enable SPF and/or
DKIM on Email
Servers
Communication
Templates &
Business Process
• Email Templates
• Approve NPS
Survey Questions
• Finalize Calls to
Action and
Playbooks
6-8 Hours!
Resource: Gainsight
Administrator, Business
Owner!
Required Pre-work

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How Did We Get There?

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Core Areas of the Platform Driving Value
Prioritized the core areas of Gainsight that would apply to all
customers and would drive the most significant value.
Identified Common Hurdles and Removed Them
Where did implementations stall? Which decisions were hardest
for customers to make? Which areas of the product required the
most time but delivered the lowest value?
Resources and Segmentation
Segmented Customers into three tiers – SMB and Mid-Market,
Enterprise and Strategic
Aligned PMO resources into Express, Concierge, and Strategic
Created new roles for handling technical complexity
- Changed Packaging
- Established Project
Milestones
- Product Enhancements
- Workbooks + Webinars
- Prescriptive
Instructions
- Aligned Onboarding
Packages
- New PMO Roles
- New technical roles

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Onboarding Segments
Express
• Segment
• SMB
• Mid-Market
• Select Enterprise
• Approach
• Workshop (1:M)
• 5 weeks of 1:1
• 2 Rollouts
• PM: 20 projects
• Packaged Service
Concierge-Custom
• Segment
• Mid-Market
• Enterprise
• Approach
• 1:1 Bi-weekly
• Scope for additional
resource or reqts
• May recommend
Express Workshop
• PM: 5 projects
• T&M SOW
Strategic
• Segment
• Enterprise
• New Use Cases
• Approach
• Dedicated PM
• Phased Rollouts
• T&M SOW

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Child-like Joy
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Your Journey!

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• Don’t apply a “One-Size-Fits-All” approach
• Align with the sales process
• Consider the approach aligned with the Customer
Success team
• Align the onboarding approach and people to your
segments
• Focus onboarding on the key areas of the product that
your most successful customers use
Segment Your Customers

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• What must you do for your customers?
• Can you change these things through process or product
changes?
• What can you do with your customers?
• Are these training opportunities?
• Can these be delivered in a 1:M approach?
• What can you enable your customers to do for
themselves? What do you need to do to make it
happen?
• Email materials, Community / Support documentation
Doing For versus Doing With versus Enabling

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• Set clear milestones
• Track achievement against those milestones
• Alert when behind schedule
• Involve the customer in those milestones
• Use playbooks to drive next steps and facilitate transitions
within your own organization
• Align with your Customer Success Team to respond to
issues during onboarding - “slow customers”, “launch
risk” scenarios
Establish Milestones and Measurements

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1 2 3
Your Journey: Roadmap for Success
Segment Your
Customers
Doing “For”
vs. “With” vs.
“Enabling”
Establish
Milestones &
Measurements

26. ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Child-like Joy
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
Denise Stokowski
VP of Client Solutions
dstokowski@gainsight.com
Sara Vaughan
PMO Director
svaughan@gainsight.com
Questions?!